Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Education – in the Senedd at 1:51 pm on 25 April 2018.
No. May I just say that it was important for me that I was in the House of Lords on Monday, protecting the charter of fundamental rights for languages? I do think and believe that that will be carried over and that that will provide some safeguards for us—legal safeguards that may otherwise have been removed.
In terms of your question on standards, you will be aware that the negotiations on what should happen in primary care are ongoing. Medical contracts—a great deal of work has been done on those already. One other thing we’re doing, of course, is that we’ve established a pilot with Working Welsh in order to ensure that we’re aware of what the problems are in terms of introducing these changes in primary care, just so that we can see how easy it would be, or otherwise, and how much support would be required in that area.
In terms of other standards, you will be aware that we intend to bring a new Welsh language Bill forward, and what’s important is that we do have some sort of assurance that what we have on the table will comply with any changes that we introduce. So, I don’t think it makes sense, at the moment, for us to bring new standards forward until we have far more clarity on what the future holds.